When Did Comie Says He Was Looking Inro Hikkary Emails Again Just Before the Election

This is the tenth article in a series that reviews news coverage of the 2022 general election, explores how Donald Trump won and why his chances were underrated past most of the American media.

Hillary Clinton would probably be president if FBI Director James Comey had not sent a letter to Congress on Oct. 28. The letter, which said the FBI had "learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation" into the private email server that Clinton used as secretary of state, upended the news bike and soon halved Clinton's atomic number 82 in the polls, imperiling her position in the Balloter Higher.

The letter isn't the only reason that Clinton lost. Information technology does not excuse every determination the Clinton campaign fabricated. Other factors may take played a larger role in her defeat, and it's up to Democrats to examine those as they choose their strategy for 2022 and 2020.

But the effect of those factors — say, Clinton'southward decision to give paid speeches to investment banks, or her messaging on pocket-book issues, or the function that her gender played in the campaign — is hard to mensurate. The impact of Comey'southward letter is comparatively easy to quantify, past contrast. At a maximum, it might have shifted the race by 3 or 4 percentage points toward Donald Trump, swinging Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Florida to him, mayhap forth with Due north Carolina and Arizona. At a minimum, its affect might take been only a percentage indicate or and then. Notwithstanding, considering Clinton lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin past less than 1 point, the alphabetic character was probably enough to change the result of the Balloter College.

And however, from almost the moment that Trump won the White House, many mainstream journalists have been in deprival virtually the impact of Comey's letter. The commodity that led The New York Times's website the morning after the election did not mention Comey or "FBI" even one time — a bizarre development considering the dramatic headlines that the Times had given to the letter while the entrada was underway. Books on the campaign accept treated Comey's letter as an incidental gene, meanwhile. And even though Clinton herself has repeatedly brought upwardly the letter of the alphabet — including in comments she made at an event in New York on Tuesday — many pundits have preferred to alter the conversation when the letter of the alphabet comes up, waving it abroad instead of debating the merits of the instance.

The motivation for this seems adequately clear: If Comey'due south letter altered the outcome of the election, the media may accept some responsibility for the outcome. The story dominated news coverage for the meliorate function of a week, drowning out other headlines, whether they were negative for Clinton (such equally the news nearly impending Obamacare premium hikes) or problematic for Trump (such as his alleged ties to Russia). And yet, the story didn't have a punchline: Ii days earlier the election, Comey disclosed that the emails hadn't turned up annihilation new.

1 can believe that the Comey letter of the alphabet toll Clinton the election without thinking that the media cost her the ballot — information technology was an urgent story that any newsroom had to encompass. But if the Comey letter had a decisive effect and the story was mishandled by the printing — given a disproportionate amount of attention relative to its substantive importance, ofttimes with coverage that jumped to conclusions before the facts of the case were clear — the media needs to grapple with how it approached the story. More sober coverage of the story might accept yielded a milder voter reaction.

My focus in this series of articles has been on the media'southward horse-race coverage rather than its editorial decisions overall, but when it comes to the Comey letter, these things are intertwined. Not only was the letter probably enough to swing the result of the horse race, but the reverse is also true: Perceptions of the horse race probably affected the way the story unfolded. Publications may have given hyperbolic coverage to the Comey letter in part because they misanalyzed the Balloter College and wrongly concluded that Clinton was a sure thing. And Comey himself may have released his alphabetic character in part considering of his overconfidence in Clinton's chances. It's a mess — so let'south run across what we can practise to untangle it.

Clinton was in a danger zone before Comey'south letter

Clinton woke up on the morn of Oct. 28 as the probable — past no means sure — next president. Trump had come off a period of five weeks in which he'd had three erratic debates and numerous women charge him of sexual set on afterward the "Admission Hollywood" tape became public. Clinton led by approximately 6 percentage points in national polls and past six to 7 points in polls of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Her leads in Florida and North Carolina were narrow, and she was only tied with Trump in Ohio and Iowa.¹ Only it was a pretty good overall position.

Her continuing was not quite equally safe as information technology might have appeared from a surface analysis, withal. For one thing, there were withal lots of undecided voters, especially in the Midwest. Although Trump had a paltry 37 percent to 38 percent of the vote in polls of Michigan, for example, Clinton had simply 43 percent to 44 percent. That left the door open for Trump to leapfrog her if late developments caused undecideds to break toward him. Furthermore, in the effect that the race tightened, Clinton'south vote was inefficiently distributed in the Electoral Higher, concentrated in littoral states rather than swing states. While she had only an 11 percentage gamble of losing the popular vote co-ordinate to FiveThirtyEight's forecast that morning, her chances of losing the Electoral Higher were a fair bit college: 18 pct.

Another danger to Clinton was complacency. Several days earlier, the Times had written that she was on the verge of having an "unbreakable lead." And there was a chance that people looking at statistical forecasts were misreading them and "rounding up" a probable Clinton win to a sure thing. (We'll take up that topic upwards at more than length in a time to come commodity in this series.) But Clinton had actually slipped past a per centum signal or so in polls since the final fence on Oct. 19. And the news cycle had get somewhat listless; the nearly prevalent story that morning was nearly the trial in the Oregon wild animals refuge standoff. Clinton was in a danger zone: Her lead wasn't quite big enough to exist truly safe, but information technology was big enough to make people mistakenly think information technology was.

The Comey letter nearly immediately sank Clinton's polls

News of the Comey letter bankrupt merely before ane p.thou. Eastern time on Oct. 28, when Utah. Rep Jason Chaffetz tweeted about information technology, noting the existence of the letter of the alphabet and stating (incorrectly, it turned outⁱⁱ) that the case into Clinton'due south private electronic mail server had been "reopened." The story exploded onto the scene; Fox News was treating Chaffetz's tweet as "breaking news" within 15 minutes, and the FBI story dominated headlines everywhere within roughly an hour. In an chemical element of tabloid flair, it was shortly reported that the emails in question were found on a calculator owned by Anthony Weiner, the former congressman, as office of an investigation into whether he'd sent sexually explicit messages to teenage girls.

Few news organizations gave the story more velocity than The New York Times. On the morning time of Oct. 29, Comey stories stretched across the print edition'southward front page, accompanied by a photo showing Clinton and her adjutant Huma Abedin, Weiner's estranged married woman. Although some of these articles contained detailed reporting, the headlines focused on speculation nigh the implications for the horse race — "NEW EMAILS JOLT CLINTON CAMPAIGN IN RACE'S LAST DAYS."

That Comey's decision to effect the letter of the alphabet had been then unorthodox and that the contents of the letter were so ambiguous helped fuel the story. The Times'due south print atomic number 82 on October. 30 was about Clinton'south pushback confronting Comey, and a story it published ii days after explained that Comey had broken with precedent in releasing the letter of the alphabet. It covered all sides of the controversy. Merely the controversy was an unwelcome i for Clinton, since it involved voters seeing words like "Clinton," "email," "FBI" and "investigation" together in headlines. Within a solar day of the Comey letter, Google searches for "Clinton FBI" had increased l-fold and searches for "Clinton email" about tenfold.

Clinton'south continuing in the polls fell sharply. She'd led Trump by 5.nine pct points in FiveThirtyEight'southward popular vote projection at 12:01 a.m. on Oct. 28. A week later — afterward polls had time to fully reflect the letter of the alphabet — her lead had declined to ii.9 pct points. That is to say, in that location was a shift of about iii percentage points against Clinton. And it was an especially pernicious shift for Clinton because (at least according to the FiveThirtyEight model) Clinton was underperforming in swing states as compared to the country overall. In the average swing state,³ Clinton'due south pb declined from iv.5 percentage points at the outset of Oct. 28 to just 1.vii percentage points on Nov. 4. If the polls were off even slightly, Trump could be headed to the White House.

Is it possible this was all simply a coincidence — that Clinton'southward numbers went into refuse for reasons other than Comey's letter? I think there's a decent example (which we'll take upwards in a moment) that some of the decline in Clinton's numbers reflected reversion to the hateful and was bound to happen anyway.

But it's not credible to merits that the Comey letter had no effect at all. Information technology was the dominant story of the terminal 10 days of the campaign. According to the news aggregation site Memeorandum, which algorithmically tracks which stories are gaining the most traction in the mainstream media, the Comey letter was the lead story on six out of seven mornings from October. 29 to Nov. 4, pausing just for a one-half-day stretch when Mother Jones and Slate published stories alleging ties between the Trump campaign and Russian federation.

The elevation stories on Memeorandum.com leading upwardly to the election

	Morning time (9 A.Thousand.)	EVENING (v P.M.)
Oct. 20	Fence epitomize	Will Trump accept election results?
21	Trump campaign palace intrigue	DDoS attack
22	Trump hotels to drop Trump proper noun	Trump sexual assault accusations
23	Trump sexual attack accusations	Polls
24	Terry McAuliffe investigation	WikiLeaks/Podesta
25	Breitbart coordination with Democrats	Trump campaign palace intrigue
26	Newt Gingrich vs. Megyn Kelly	Trump's Hollywood star vandalized
27	Trump entrada palace intrigue	Trump entrada palace intrigue
28	Oregon/Ammon Bundy standoff	Comey letter/Clinton emails
29	Comey letter/Clinton emails	Comey letter/Clinton emails
30	Comey letter/Clinton emails	Comey letter/Clinton emails
31	Comey alphabetic character/Clinton emails	Comey letter of the alphabet/Clinton emails
Nov. 1	Trump/Russia ties	Polls
ii	Comey letter/Clinton emails	Comey letter/Clinton emails
3	Comey alphabetic character/Clinton emails	Comey letter of the alphabet/Clinton emails
4	Comey letter/Clinton emails	Terror threat
five	National Enquirer and Trump	Early voting information
6	Trump Hush-hush Service scare	Trump campaign palace intrigue
7	Polls	Polls

It's rare to see stories linger in headlines for more than than two to iii days given how quickly the news cycle moves during election campaigns. When 1 does, some result on the polls is oftentimes expected. And that's what we saw. The sharpness of the decline — with Clinton losing three points in a week^four — is consistent with a news-driven shift, rather than gradual reversion to the hateful.

We besides accept a lot of other evidence of shifting preferences among voters in the waning days of the campaign. Leave polls showed that undecided and late-deciding voters broke toward Trump, particularly in the Midwest. A panel survey conducted by FiveThirtyEight contributor Dan Hopkins and other researchers also plant shifts between mid-October and the end of the campaign — an outcome that would amount to a swing of virtually 4 percent points against Clinton.^v And we know that previous email-related stories had caused trouble for Clinton in the polls. In July, when Comey said he wouldn't recommend charges confronting Clinton but rebuked her treatment of classified information, she lost about ii percent points in the polls. Periods of intense coverage of her email server had besides been associated with polling declines during the Democratic principal.

So while one tin fence the magnitude of the effect, there's a reasonably clear consensus of the testify that the Comey letter of the alphabet mattered^half-dozen — probably by enough to swing the election. This ought not exist one of the more controversial facts about the 2022 campaign; the information is pretty straightforward. Why the media covered the story equally it did and how to weigh the Comey letter against the other causes for Clinton's defeat are the more complicated parts of the story.

The Times idea it was roofing President-elect Clinton's commencement scandal

Re-read one of those New York Times front-page stories from October. 29 — "This Changes Everything': Donald Trump Exults equally Hillary Clinton's Team Scrambles" — and yous'll exist surprised past how strange it is. Information technology begins by describing the Comey letter of the alphabet in dramatic terms, as "the kind of potential turnabout rarely if ever seen at this late phase of a presidential race":

Everything was looking upwardly for Hillary Clinton. She was riding loftier in the polls, even seeing an improvement on trustworthiness. She was sitting on $153 million in cash. At 12:37 p.thou. Friday, her aides announced that she planned to entrada in Arizona, a state that a Democratic presidential candidate has carried just in one case since 1948.

20 minutes afterwards, Oct delivered its latest large surprise.

The F.B.I. manager's disclosure to Congress that agents would exist reviewing a new trove of emails that appeared pertinent to its investigation into Mrs. Clinton's private email server — an investigation that had been declared airtight — set off a frantic and alarmed scramble inside Mrs. Clinton's campaign and amidst her Democratic allies, while Republicans raced to seize the advantage.

In the kind of potential turnabout rarely if ever seen at this late phase of a presidential race, Donald J. Trump exulted in his good fortune.

And all the same the same Times commodity told readers that this rarely-if-ever-seen turnabout wouldn't cost Clinton the election. She had banked as well much of a lead in early voting, the story said, and it came besides late in the campaign. Instead, the Comey letter could "cast a cloud over a victorious Mrs. Clinton's administration-in-waiting":

With early voting well underway, and Mrs. Clinton already benefiting from Mr. Trump's weekslong slide in the polls, Democrats' concerns were tempered — more in the realm of apprehensiveness than panic.

[…]

Mrs. Clinton has an enormous greenbacks reward — $153 one thousand thousand in the bank for her entrada and joint fund-raising accounts as of last calendar week, compared with $68 million for Mr. Trump's campaign and joint accounts — which means Mr. Trump has limited means to use the F.B.I. enquiry to damage Mrs. Clinton with television ads.

With more than six meg Americans having already voted as of Monday, any efforts past Mr. Trump to claw his style back into contention could come also belatedly. The Clinton entrada says its early voting turnout data points to a Democratic advantage in several swing states, including Florida, Colorado, Arizona and Iowa.

But the specter of an F.B.I. inquiry could bandage a cloud over a victorious Mrs. Clinton'south administration-in-waiting. News had hardly spread when exasperated Democrats and donors were ruefully dredging up painful memories of the seemingly constant tug of congressional investigations on Bill Clinton's White House.

What the heck is going on here? Why was the Times giving Comey'south letter such blockbuster coverage and at the same fourth dimension going out of its style to insist that it wouldn't affect the outcome?

The evidence is consequent with the theory that the Times covered the Comey letter as it did because it saw Clinton as the almost-sure side by side president — and Trump as a historical footnote. By treating the letter as a huge deal, it could become a head start on covering the next administration and its imbroglios. It could likewise "bear witness" to its critics that information technology could provide tough coverage of Democrats, thereby countering accusations of liberal bias (a longstanding hang-upward at the Times). And so what if information technology wasn't clear from the letter of the alphabet whether Clinton had washed annihilation wrong? The Times could use the same weasel-worded linguistic communication that it frequently does in such situations, speaking of the Comey letter equally having "cast a cloud" over Clinton.

In a sense, the Times may have made a version of the aforementioned mistake that Comey reportedly did, co-ordinate to the very detailed recounting of the FBI director's determination that the Times published last month. The newspaper's editors and reporters thought Clinton had the election in the handbag. And they didn't consider how their own actions might influence the consequence and invalidate their cess. That influence was substantial in Comey's case and marginal for the Times, equally one of many media outlets covering the story. Just the media'due south choices equally a whole potentially mattered, and the tone of campaign coverage shifted substantially merely as voters were going to the polls.

"Little Comey" vs. "Big Comey"

One tin make a instance that the race would have tightened fifty-fifty if Comey had not issued his letter. Clinton had already lost a per centum signal or then off her lead in the week earlier the Comey letter; if she continued at that charge per unit of decline, she'd be down to a four- to 5-indicate lead by Ballot Day. And although polls don't ever tighten down the stretch run — Barack Obama's lead expanded at the end of the 2008 and 2012 campaigns — they sometimes move more in line with economical conditions and other "fundamental" factors. As of Oct. 28, the polls-plus version of FiveThirtyEight's forecast, which accounts for these factors, expected Clinton to lose a betoken or and then off her lead earlier Ballot Day.

Another complicating gene is that Clinton had a slight rebound in the polls over the terminal 36 hours of the campaign, with her atomic number 82 improving from 2.9 percentage points on Nov. 6 to 3.half-dozen points in our terminal forecast^vii on the morning time of Nov. 8 (Ballot Day). Information technology's not entirely clear what this uptick represented — it may have reflected pollster herding every bit outlier polls magically changed their melody. Merely it besides could accept meant that the Comey effect was fading as the news wheel moved on to other stories.

So you could postulate that the Comey alphabetic character had only about a 1-point affect. Perhaps Clinton's lead would have been whittled down to around four.5 points anyway by Ballot Day because of hateful-reversion. And she led in the final polls past about iii.5 points. Yes, she besides underperformed her final polls on Election Day, but that could reflect pollster error or undecideds breaking confronting her for other reasons, this case would say — there was no detail reason to attribute it to Comey.

Nonetheless, Clinton lost Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin past less than 1 percentage point, and those states were enough to price her the election. She lost Florida by just slightly more than than one bespeak. If the Comey alphabetic character had a internet impact of only a indicate or so, nosotros'd accept been in recount territory in several of these states — but Clinton would probably have come out ahead. I telephone call this the "Little Comey" case — certain, the Comey alphabetic character mattered, simply only because the ballot was so close.

Even a small Comey effect could take cost Clinton the 270 balloter votes she needed to win

		ADJUSTED VOTE MARGIN
	CLINTON VOTE MARGIN	Small COMEY Event*	Big COMEY EFFECT*	CLINTON'S ELECTORAL VOTES HAD SHE WON
Michigan	-0.two	+0.viii	+three.8	248
Pennsylvania	-0.vii	+0.three	+3.3	268
Wisconsin	-0.eight	+0.2	+iii.2	278
Florida	-1.ii	-0.2	+2.eight	307
Nebraska'due south second C.D.	-2.1	-1.1	+ane.ix	308
Arizona	-three.5	-2.five	+0.5	319
North Carolina	-iii.7	-two.7	+0.3	334
Georgia	-5.1	-four.i	-1.1	350
Ohio	-8.1	-7.1	-iv.1	368
Texas	-9.0	-8.0	-5.0	406
Iowa	-nine.4	-8.iv	-five.4	412

Or one could argue for a larger impact from the Comey alphabetic character. This is the "Large Comey" example. There was nothing inevitable about the race tightening, information technology would say, given that the news wheel had been unpredictable and that Trump had a tendency to dig deeper holes for himself while down in the polls.

Representatives of the Clinton campaign made two additional "Big Comey" claims in comments at the Harvard Institute of Politics conference later on the election.

First, they said the letter's impact was larger in Midwestern swing states such as Wisconsin considering at that place were big numbers of undecided voters there, especially among white voters without college degrees. And the Clinton campaign claimed that the 2d Comey alphabetic character — which he issued late in the afternoon on November. half-dozen and which appear that the emails on Weiner'south laptop hadn't turned up anything new — injure Clinton because it put "FBI," "Clinton" and "email" back in the headlines. This is hard to test because the 2d Comey letter came so late in the campaign that in that location wasn't time for polls to pick up its furnishings.

But information technology'south plausible that Clinton'south underperformance versus the polls on Election Day had something to do with Comey — either lingering effects from his original alphabetic character or new effects from his second letter. The "Large Comey" case might attribute a four-point touch on to him nationally — accounting for the swing between Clinton's 6-point lead on the morning of Oct. 28 and her ii-betoken pop vote margin on Election Twenty-four hour period — and slightly more than than that in the swing states.

My personal views are more than toward the "Little Comey" side of the spectrum, since I think there would take been a fair corporeality of hateful-reversion even without Comey. That's because Clinton and Trump had alternated better and worse months in the polls in a way that tracked with the news wheel. Clinton had been in a strong position in the polls in June, August and — until the Comey letter — in October, while Trump had drawn shut to her in May, July and September (and therefore might have been "due" for an uptick in November). This pattern may take reflected some sort of complicated feedback loop in media coverage. After some initial stimulus — say, a stiff contend — there was a frenzy of favorable coverage for a candidate and negative coverage for her opponent, with news events framed against a backdrop of rising or falling polls. Then after a few weeks, the reporting on the story wearied itself, the polls stabilized and the press was eager to look for a reversal of momentum. Comey'due south letter came at a time when the campaign press may take been itching for a change in the narrative after several tough weeks for Trump. If not for the Comey letter, peradventure some other story would have blown up in Clinton'southward face. Withal, this theory is speculative, and those other stories might non take had the kryptonite-like consequence that email-related stories had on Clinton'southward numbers.

Let'south play the blame game

The Comey letter wasn't necessarily the about important factor in Clinton's defeat, although it's probably the one nosotros can be virtually sure most. To explain the distinction, consider Clinton's determination to run a highly negative entrada that focused on branding Trump as an unacceptable pick. One tin can imagine this being a huge, election-losing mistake: Trump'southward negatives didn't need whatsoever reinforcing, whereas Clinton should have used her resources to improve her own image. But ane could also fence that Clinton's strategy worked, up to a point: Trump was exceptionally unpopular and needed a lot of things to break his way to win the election despite that. The range of possible impacts from this strategic option is wide; perhaps it cost Clinton several percentage points, or possibly it helped her instead. The range from the Comey letter is narrower, by dissimilarity, and easier to measure. It was a discrete event that came tardily in the campaign and had a direct outcome on the polls.

The standard way to dismiss the letter's bear on is to say that Clinton should never have let the race get that shut to begin with. But the race wasn't that close before the Comey letter; Clinton had led by about 6 percentage points and was poised to win with a map like this one, including states such as North Carolina and Arizona (simply non Ohio or Iowa).^eight My guess is that the same pundits who pilloried Clinton's campaign after the Comey alphabetic character would have considered information technology an impressive showing and spoken highly of her tactics.

Thus, yous accept to appraise the letter's bear on to practice an honest accounting of the Clinton campaign. If you lot're in the "Large Comey" campsite and recollect Clinton would have won by 5 or 6 percent points without the letter, it'south hard to fault Clinton all that much. Even given all of Trump'south deficiencies as a candidate, that's a big margin for an election in which the "fundamentals" pointed toward a fairly close race. "Footling Comey" believers have more than room to assign blame to Clinton's campaign, in addition to Comey (and the media'south coverage of him).

Simply campaign postmortems virtually always involve a lot of results-oriented cherry-picking. It's easy to single out things that Clinton did poorly — her handling of the email scandal, her inability to drive a positive message and her poor Electoral Higher tactics would have to rank highly amid them (although those Electoral College choices probably didn't swing the election). In that location are also some things the entrada did well, still. For example, Clinton got a huge bounce after her convention, and she won all iii debates according to polls of debate-watchers. She too made a fairly smart VP selection in Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine. These aren't minor things; in normal presidential campaigns, preparing for the debates, staging the conventions and picking a solid running mate are about equally high-stakes as decisions get. Clinton did poorly in the unscripted portions of the campaign, however, and the campaign went off script in the last 10 days.

If I were advising a future candidate on what to learn from 2016, I'd tell him or her to by and large forget most the Comey alphabetic character and focus on the factors that were within the command of Clinton and Trump. That's not my purpose hither. Instead, it'south to become at the truth — to figure out the real story of the election. The real story is that the Comey letter had a fairly big and measurable impact, probably enough to toll Clinton the election. Information technology wasn't the merely thing that mattered, and information technology might not accept been the most of import. Just the media is nevertheless largely in denial about how much of an result it had.

Footnotes

1. These figures are according to the FiveThirtyEight polls-just forecast as of 12:01 a.k. on October. 28.

2. The letter of the alphabet said the FBI would "review" the emails to "assess their importance to our investigation."

3. As weighted past the country'south likelihood of being the tipping-indicate state.

4. There's a lag between when a news consequence occurs and when polls are published that reflect interviews covered afterwards the outcome. Typically, a major news event might take ii to iii days to brainstorm to exist reflected in the FiveThirtyEight forecast and near a week before it's fully priced into the forecast.

5. The advantage of a panel study is that it surveys the same voters repeatedly, thus eliminating the potential effects of nonresponse bias. Not all of the 4-point swing reflected Clinton voters switching to Trump, however. A lot of it was undecideds or third-political party voters breaking toward Trump, or Clinton supporters deciding non to vote.

6. For even-deeper dives into the Comey letter of the alphabet's affect, see Kevin Drum or this summary at Vox.

7. Specifically, in the polls-merely version of our forecast.

8. That's the map you get if you add 4 points to Clinton's bodily margin in every land.

Nate Silvery is the founder and editor in principal of FiveThirtyEight. @natesilver538

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Source: https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-comey-letter-probably-cost-clinton-the-election/

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